Along with daily oral hygiene and regular dental visits, a balanced and nutritious diet is another key part of great oral health. The foods you eat can have a profound impact on how well your teeth and gums withstand diseases like tooth decay and periodontal (gum) disease.

At the heart of proper nutrition are organic compounds called vitamins. Along with trace minerals, vitamins help the body convert food into energy, repair cellular and tissue damage and protect against environmental toxins. When you don’t receive an adequate amount of each vitamin your health can suffer; in terms of dental health, your teeth and gums can weaken and become more susceptible to disease.

Vitamins play a wide variety of roles, including within the mouth. The Vitamins A and C contained in fruits and vegetables and Vitamin E in vegetable oils are antioxidants that protect cells and their DNA from destructive elements in the environment. As such, they’re a major prevention factor against tooth decay and gum disease. Vitamin D, found in dairy products, eggs or certain seafood, is used by bone and teeth to absorb calcium. Without sufficient calcium, teeth and bone lose vitality and strength.

This recognized power of vitamins for optimum health has also fueled the multi-billion dollar nutritional supplement industry. But studies show that your best source for vitamins are the foods you eat—and the more natural foods and less processed products you eat, the better your vitamin and mineral intake. Taking supplements isn’t necessarily wrong—but it’s not in your best interest health-wise to depend on them for vitamins and minerals at the expense of healthier eating.

So in all you do to prevent dental disease, don’t overlook your diet. The vitamins and minerals you receive from foods in their most natural state will help you keep your teeth and gums healthy and your smile beautiful.

Every year dentists place over 5 million dental implants for lost teeth, often removing the problem tooth and installing the implant at the same time. But getting a “tooth in a day” depends on a number of health factors, especially whether or not there’s adequate bone available for the implant. Otherwise, the implant’s placement accuracy and success could be compromised.

Bone loss can be a similar problem when a tooth has been missing for a long period of time. If this describes your situation, you may have already lost substantial bone in your jaw. To understand why, we need to know a little about bone’s growth cycle.

When bone cells reach the end of their useful life, they’re absorbed into the body by a process called resorption. New cells then form to take the older cells’ place in a continuous cycle that keeps the bone healthy and strong. Forces generated when we chew travel through the teeth to the bone and help stimulate this growth. But when a tooth is missing, the bone doesn’t receive this stimulus. As a result, the bone may not replace itself at a healthy rate and diminish over time.

In extreme cases, we may need to consider some other dental restoration other than an implant. But if the bone loss isn’t too severe, we may be able to help increase it through bone grafting. We insert safe bone grafting material prepared in a lab directly into the jaw through a minor surgical procedure. The graft then acts like a scaffold for bone cells to form and grow upon. In a few months enough new bone may have formed to support an implant.

Bone grafting can also be used if you’re having a tooth removed to preserve the bone even if you’re not yet ready to obtain an implant. By placing a bone graft immediately after extraction, it’s possible to retain the bone for up to ten years—enough time to decide on your options for permanent restoration.

Whatever your situation, it’s important that you visit us as soon as possible for a complete examination. Afterward we can assess your options and hopefully come up with a treatment strategy that will eventually include smile-transforming dental implants.

Physical pain is never pleasant or welcomed. Nevertheless, it’s necessary for your well-being—pain is your body telling you something isn’t right and needs your attention.

That fully applies to tooth pain. Not all tooth pain is the same—the intensity, location and duration could all be telling you one of a number of things that could be wrong. In a way, pain has its own “language” that can give us vital clues as to what’s truly causing it.

Here are 3 types of tooth pain and what they might be telling you about an underlying dental problem.

Sensitivity to hot or cold. If you’ve ever had a sharp, momentary pain after consuming something hot like coffee or cold like ice cream, this could indicate several causative possibilities. You might have a small area of tooth decay or a loose filling. You might also have an exposed root due to gum recession, which is much more sensitive to temperature or pressure changes. The latter is also a sign of periodontal (gum) disease.

Acute or constant pain. If you’re feeling a severe and continuing pain from one particular area of your teeth (even if you can’t tell exactly which one), this could mean the pulp, the tooth’s innermost layer, has become infected with decay. The pain is emanating from nerves within the pulp coming under attack from the decay. To save the tooth, you may need a root canal treatment to remove the decayed tissue and seal the tooth from further infection. You should see your dentist as soon as possible, even if the pain suddenly stops—that only means the nerves have died, but the decay is still there and threatening your tooth.

Severe gum pain. If there’s an extremely painful spot on your gums especially sensitive to touch, then you may have an abscess. This is a localized area of infection that develops in the gums either as the result of periodontal (gum) disease, or an infection spreading from the tooth pulp into the gum tissues. You’ll need to see a dentist immediately for both pain relief and appropriate treatment (including a possible root canal) to heal the abscessed tissue.

You've reached a decision—that old, unattractive smile has to go. You're ready for a complete makeover—and the field of cosmetic dentistry has the materials, techniques and equipment to make it happen.

But it could be a major undertaking requiring a fair amount of time and money. And once all the procedures are complete, what if you're not happy with the results?

Fortunately, you don't have to wait with nervous apprehension until the end of the dental work to see what your smile will look like. We can give you a realistic preview of your new smile before we even begin—and not on a computer monitor. We can actually create a trial smile applied directly to your actual teeth so you can see your new look up close and personal, and in all three spatial dimensions.

That's not to put down enhanced computer presentations. State-of-the-art imaging software can display an accurate representation of your future smile transposed onto an image of your face. But it's still a two-dimensional image, like any other photograph. It can't present the full range, movement or feel of the real thing.

A trial smile can. We shape and sculpt composite resin to resemble the finished dental work and temporarily bond it to your teeth. Once applied, you'll then be able to see what your appearance will look like from different angles and movements. Although we'll have to remove the trial smile before you leave, we can photograph it so you can show it to family and friends for their reaction.

While it's an added expense, a trial smile has two great benefits. First, it helps both of us "test drive" your new look and see how it performs in different ways: as you speak, when you're relaxed and, of course, when you smile. This allows us, if necessary, to fine-tune your planned dental work. Perhaps the biggest benefit, though, is that it can reassure you you've made the right decision to remake your smile.

With a trail smile, there are no surprises—you'll know what the end result will look like before any work is done. And that can be a great motivator toward obtaining the smile you've dreamed of having.

Root canal treatment can be an effective life preserver for a heavily decayed tooth. The question a lot of people ask, though, is how long might the tooth survive after treatment.

That’s an important concern since the treated tooth was in dire straits beforehand as decay had infected its inner most layer, the pulp. The infection, which had caused the living bundles of nerves, blood vessels and connective tissue within to become inflamed and diseased, was poised to invade even deeper through the root canals. During the root canal treatment, the infected pulp tissue is removed and the empty chamber and root canals are filled with a special filling to seal the tooth from further infection.

The protection, though, isn’t an absolute certainty: how long a treated tooth survives depends on a number of factors. For one, the earlier a diseased tooth can be initially diagnosed — especially if the infection hasn’t spread into the jawbone — the better the procedural outcome. Likewise, the chances of longevity are also better if the initial root canal treatment was thorough in identifying and filling all the root canals as well as capping the tooth with a life-like crown in a timely manner after treatment.

The type and location of the tooth can also affect its long-term health. Front teeth, with their single roots and canals are easier to access and treat. Back teeth, by contrast, can have two or more roots and a more intricate canal network. These kinds of complications could require the use of special microscopic equipment and the expertise of an endodontist, a specialist in root canals.

Even if a re-infection occurs, the tooth isn’t necessarily lost. A repeat root canal treatment that addresses these and other issues, could give the tooth a “third” chance. In any case, if a tooth is worth saving attempting a root canal treatment is generally preferable to losing the tooth and replacing it with a prosthetic tooth — it’s well worth the try.

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